Strong, Leonard Alfred George

(1896-1956)

   He was born in Plymouth of a half-Irish father and Irish mother and was educated at Brighton College. A spinal complaint interrupted his education at Wadham College, Oxford, and kept him from active service in World War I. He became an assistant master at Summer Fields School, Oxford, returned to Wadham and graduated B.A. in 1920. He went back to Summer Fields and remained a master there until 1930, when he became a full-time writer. He published more than 20 novels as well as short stories, biographies and criticism, and collaborated with Cecil DayLewis (see entry) in compiling anthologies. He was a director of the publishers Methuen Ltd. from 1938. Some of his poems have been set to music by Arthur Bliss, and his novel, the Brothers, was filmed in 1947. When he died in Guildford, Surrey, he left a posthumous autobiography of his early life, Green Memory (1961). Some of his poetry publications: Dublin Days, 1921. Difficult Love, 1927. Selected Poems, 1931. The Doll, 1947. The Body's Imperfection, 1957. Some of his poems: "Coroner's Jury," "The Brewer's Man," "The Mad Woman of Punnet's Town," "Zeke."

   Sources: Collected Poems of L.A.G. Strong. Methuen, 1957. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Dylan Thomas's Choice: An Antholog y of Verse Spoken by Dylan Thomas. Ralph Maud and Aneirin Talfan Davies, ed. New Directions, 1963. Modern British Poetry. 7th rev. ed. Louis Untermeyer, ed. Harcourt, Brace, 1962. Old Brightonian Association, Leonard Strong (http://www.oldbrightonians.com/strong_01.htm). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse. Philip Larkin, ed. Oxford University Press, 1973. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. What Cheer: An Anthology of American and British Humorous and Witty Verse. David McCord, ed. Coward-McCann, 1945. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).